Omdega Press: Music

Classical Flamenco
Dennis Bishop Jones

Dennis Jones spent 24 hours a day for 5 years taking care of his mother, who was bedridden. And then, in February 2007, five months after her death, he resumed his guitar-playing with the same kind of devotion he had given to his mother. In one year's time he has filled 250 tape cassettes with his music. This CD is the best of about 25 cassettes, only a fraction of his total output. This is a different Dennis Jones than the Dennis who recorded in the 1960s, quieter and more subdued. Many people like this music better because it is more relaxing. And of course he keeps getting better.

If you would like to have this music on CD, you can purchase it here via PayPal for $10.00 plus $4.00 postage and handling. Please note that this CD is packaged in a clear plastic jewel case, with no accompanying artwork.

Thunderstorm July 6, 2007
Dennis Bishop Jones

Dennis Jones plays to the accompaniment of a thunderstorm, and is joined by a small bird towards the end of this one 27-minute piece. There is some "static" in this piece, which may be caused by the static electricity in the air, but it contributes to the mood and does not detract from it.

If you would like to have this music on CD, you can purchase it here via PayPal for $10.00 plus $4.00 postage and handling. Please note that this CD is packaged in a clear plastic jewel case, with no accompanying artwork.

Dennis Bishop Jones, Black Irish, descended from Spanish sailors who came ashore in Ireland when the Spanish Armada was destroyed in 1588, has flamenco music in his blood. He started off playing rock’n’roll music, inspired by Elvis Presley. In 1964, at age 21, he got his hands on a blonde Mexican flamenco guitar made by Las Casas de guitarras in Paracho, Mexico. It produced such a beautiful sound with so little effort that he was inspired to play flamenco music. These recordings were made with that guitar. By 1966 he was showing his mastery of the flamenco techniques, including a new one of his own -- a continuous roll. On the musical advice that “Any combination of two or more notes is a chord,” Dennis has gone into a whole spectrum of combinations of musical notes, with disharmonies emerging into harmonies, more like modern classical music than traditional flamenco. More...

Dennis Jones is composing this music as he is playing it. And he is never predictable. Just when you think you know exactly where he is going, he goes somewhere else.

He is using the flamenco techniques, and he is improvising as he goes along, in the true spirit of traditional flamenco guitar music, as the spontaneous expression of a man’s passion and energy and soul. But the music that comes out of him is not the traditional flamenco. (And it isn’t another imitation of Django Reinhardt imitating flamenco music, either.) It is something different. He wants to call it “classical.” It has a classical feeling, anyway, and people with a trained ear for classical music or modern jazz should enjoy what he is doing. But really it is his own creation, it is unique, and therefore there is no name for it. More...